lives across a liquid landscape

8/14/2019 Lives Across a Liquid Landscape

1/24

Draft copy only

Lives Across a Liquid Landscape: Cornish Migration and the

Transatlantic World

As metaphors of flux and flows colonise the geographical study of places so regionsbecome stretched over space. Viewed no longer as bounded constructions anchored to

physical places regions become spaces of openness and connectivity (Smith 2004).

Such a discourse of regions - as complex stretched networks with an unbounded

lattice of articulations (Allen et al 1998, 65) - leads to a relational and non-

topographical approach to regions, one where network supersedes territory. Yet this

perspective, while opening up understandings of the contemporary world, with its

frenetic migrations of capital, commodities and cultures, has been accused of over-stretching its own analysis. Jones and MacLeod (2004) counter such relational

arguments by re-emphasising geographies of territory and scale, proposing that

everyday issues of regionalization and regionalism are enacted in territorially

demarcated and scalar defined terms (see also Deacon 2004). By re-inserting the

concepts of scale and identity they also re-ground the study of regions on discrete

territories. However, this debate in regional geography tends to focus on

contemporary regions, notwithstanding plentiful references to Paasis model of the

institutionalization of regions over time (Paasi 1986, 1991). But the latter implies that

both geographical and historical sensitivity must be brought to bear on area studies.

Relational, non-topographical paradigms also clearly have relevance to the concepts

of transnationalism and diaspora. Nonetheless, the role of transnationalism and

diaspora in historical migration studies tends to be under-theorised. Picking up on

Jones and MacLeods distinction between the new regional spaces and the new spaces

of regionalism of contemporary regionalization/regionalism, in this paper we

distinguish between a transnational space and a space of transnationalism. The former

comprises those networks, economic, social and cultural, that link places across

boundaries and give rise to functional spaces. The latter is more concerned with the

issues of identity, belonging and meaning associated with such concepts as diaspora.

Furthermore, to pursue this distinction historically, we engage with a case study of a

sub-nation state migration. In doing this the taken for granted and banal national

flagging of transnationalism might be peeled away (Billig 1995), revealing a more

1


2/24

Draft copy only

fluid, layered and contested picture. In this case study we argue that transnational

spaces in one temporal era can provide the sediment around which spaces of

transnationalism cohere in a later era. Moreover, just as nations can comprise more

than those living within a state, a geographically bounded territory (Lee 2004), so the

imagined community of transnationalism can in this instance be constructed on the

basis of what might appear at first glance to be a trans-regional transnational space.

Scale, transnationalism and diaspora

Burgess (1999: 1-29) has summarised the competing scales adopted by scholars

working in the field of the new British history. The anglocentric framework of an

older generation of English historians gave way to Eurocentric frameworks as early

modern British historians looked to Europe in order to contextualise issues of state

formation. Historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century then pursued an

atlantocentric framework as they followed the British across the oceans. The latter

framework has been taken further by the new areas studies, where the prevailing

zeitgeist has moved away from politically constructed geographical entities to areas

previously overlooked as significant sites in and of themselves. This was stimulated

by the Ford Foundations important initiative, Crossing Borders: Revitalising Area

Studies in 1997 that made a case for process geographies and evolved a project at

Dale University that was entitled, Oceans Connect: Culture, Capital and Commodity

Flows Across Basins. The thrust of this new perspective was to bring to light a set of

historical regions that had remained largely invisible on the world map. Reflecting the

more relational turn, according to the oceans connect perspective the world is not

divided into knowable and self-contained areas but is part of an inter-linked whole

in which people, ideas, capital and technology are connected across great physical

divides. Area studies are thus re-framed around oceans and sea basins, helping us to

avoid a traditional over-determination by national historiographies and opening up the

possibility of viewing territories in a different light. For instance, previously

marginalised and overlooked geographical areas take on new significance and littoral

societies can be viewed not merely as peripheries of nation-states or continental

civilisations but as communities with a specific role in maritime flows. Taking this as

our cue we argue here that analysis of migration flows from Britain at a smaller,

regional scale is needed to shed light on larger processes, a point made severaldecades ago by Thistlethwaite (Vecoli and Sinke 1991).

2


3/24

Draft copy only

The concepts of transnationalism and diaspora reflect the turn to flows and

connections linking disparate places across the globe. Transnationalism received

much scholarly attention following a number of key texts by anthropologists in the

early 1990s (Rouse 1991 and 1995; Glick Schiller et al . 1992; Basch et al . 1994), and

accompanies, or arguably supersedes, bipolar analyses of migration that focus on how

migrants settle and adapt to new surroundings, shape their communities, construct

their identity, or are socially excluded by the host community (see Lucassen and

Lucassen 1999; Brettell and Hollifield 2000 among others calling for such an

approach). Transnationalism focuses on the way migrants forge and sustain multi-

stranded social relations across international borders. This can be in the name of

ethnicity, race, religion, language, locality, occupation or nation-state of origin, class,

gender, or any other factor and is characterised by a high density of interstitial ties on

informal or formal levels (Mato 1997; Faist 1999). Societies of origin and settlement

become ever more linked making the sending and receiving communities a single area

of action (see among others Kearney 1995; Castells 1996; Hannertz 1996; Smith and

Guarnizo 1998; Portes et al . 1999a and 1999b; Vertovec 1999; Vertovec and Cohen

1999). Transnational networks are often maintained across borders through time

(Glick-Schiller 1997) linking a community in its present place of residence and its

place of origin, however distant, and between the various communities of a diaspora,

(Faist 1999; Spoonley 2000) and sometimes result in transnational communities - the

building blocks of diasporas that may or may not take place (Levitt 2001a).

In this manner, the concept of transnationality appears to shade into that of diaspora.

Broadly speaking, diaspora refers to scattered communities in a period of migration,

but has a variety of meanings, from a dispersal of a people resulting from expulsion or

involuntary exile, to those who have moved from their homeland as labour migrants,

for trade or imperial reasons, or as a part of a cultural diaspora (Cohen 1997a). Today,

diasporas have become the exemplary communities of transnational movement and by

virtue of their intensity and importance, can actually challenge the very nature of

nation-states (Tllyan 1991:5). Our contention here is that the application of the

concept of transnationalism to a sub-nation state grouping also challenges taken for

granted assumptions of the nation.

3


4/24

Draft copy only

Cornwall: a contested space

Neither the new British History nor the new areas studies incorporate the

experience of the Cornish, that small but strongly formed Celtic people according to

one mid-nineteenth century observer (Merivale 1857). Cornwall has been approached

in an ambivalent fashion, its people sometimes co-opted as one of the peoples of the

British Isles (Blair 2000; Brown 2004), but at other times invisible. However, as a

result of its migration experience Cornwall looks both inwards to the heart of the

European and British polity and outwards via global connections forged during its

historical experience and via the north-south links of the Atlantic Arc, which

reflecting its importance as a littoral society at the heart of the transatlantic world.

Moreover, a study of Cornwall raises questions about the limits of transnationalism as

an organising concept. For the Cornish made up a distinct transnational space in the

nineteenth century, though then for the most part seen as part of a nation. But the

transformation of this into a space of transnationalism in the late twentieth century

reinforced the intermittent claims to national status that had surfaced within modern

Cornwall (Deacon et al 2003).

Cornwall is a peninsula in the south west corner of the British Isles, surrounded on

three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. It covers an area no more than 1,365 square miles

and at no time during the first half of the nineteenth century boasted a population

greater than 375,000. Yet for a region with such a small population, the Cornish

exerted a disproportionate influence upon the global metalliferous mining industry

and related technologies, and also made a significant contribution to the expansion of

the agricultural frontier in parts of North America and Australia. Uneven patterns of

regional industrialisation in Britain draw attention to Cornwalls leading role in the

industrial revolution in the field of metal mining and steam engineering. (Pollard

1981; Von Tunzelmann 1981, 150-151; Deacon 1998). But Cornwall was also one of

the first regions to de-industrialise following mining decline from the 1860s. During

its industrialisation and de-industrialisation it witnessed considerable migration.

According to Baines (1985, 158-9), Cornwall is estimated to have lost 118,500 people

through overseas emigration in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a figure

equivalent to 40 per cent of its young adult males and 25 per cent of its young adult

females. During the 1860s and 70s Cornwall was the only English region where therewere more lifetime male emigrants than lifetime internal migrants. Assuming that the

4


5/24

Draft copy only

rate of return to Cornwall was the same as to England and Wales as a whole, Baines

estimates that gross emigration would have been about 20 per cent of the male

Cornish born population in each ten year period from 1861-1900 and about 10 per

cent of the female. This was, according to Baines, mainly attributable to the collapse

of the mining industry, although he suggests that migration figures would have been

high even without the departure of miners. For these reasons, he suggests Cornwall is

worthy of further study.

The Cornish transnational space

Although at first agricultural districts in north Cornwall were as important sources for

migrants in relative terms as were the mining districts, after the 1850s Cornish

migration became increasingly dominated by miners and people from mining districts

(Cornish Global Migration Database). Heading first for the lead mining districts of

Wisconsin, Cornish miners turned their attention westwards during the Californian

gold rush and reacted to deep lode mining in the Sierra Nevada, Rocky Mountains,

and other western mining fields thereafter (Calhoon 1995; Ewart 1989; 1998). Around

5,000 Cornish migrated to Gilpin County Colorado between 1870 and 1914; at

Central City they made up over 50 percent of the population and 70 per cent of the

mining workforce (Granruth 1999: 42-43). By the late nineteenth century the collapse

of Cornwalls mining industry and the development of mining fields across America

meant that Cornish miners and their families were to be found in virtually every state

where there was mining or quarrying activity (See Rowse 1967; Rowe 1974; Todd

1995; Payton 1998). By the turn of the twentieth century the Cornish accounted for 55

per cent of the population of Wolverine Michigan, over 60 per cent of the population

of Grass Valley California and 98 per cent of the population of New Almaden,

California (McKinney 1997: 14). Italmost seemed that [I] had stepped into an

unknown country, wrote Edmund Kinyon in 1911, amazed at the odd ways of the

Cornish of Grass Valley and the unintelligible dialect that they spoke (Kinyon 1950).

These migrants settled in communities that acquired a discernible Cornish identity

built on mining prowess. To be Cornish was synonymous with mining skill and

excellence. Dense transatlantic migration networks between towns and villages in

Cornwall and places across the US had thus produced culturally distinct enclaves in

the Amnericas with more in common with Cornwall than with their neighbours.

5


6/24

Draft copy only

Furthermore, the Cornish inclination to keep to themselves led to a sense of their

otherness, indicated in 1879 by Robert Louis Stephenson, who observed:

a knot of Cornish miners who kept grimly to themselves, one reading the New

Testament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest discussing privately the secrets

of their old-world, mysterious racea division of races, older and more original than

Babel, keeps this close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring Englishmen. Not even

a Red Indian seems more foreign in my eyes (cited in Rowse 1967: 255-256).

Stevenson echoed earlier views by visitors of Cornwall as not of England (Collins

1850) and by the Cornish themselves as ancient Britons, proud to hail from Great

Britain, but equally proud of being the descendants of the original British inhabitantsof that island (Payton 2001). Yet in the 1800s they were usually content to note, on

official forms or memorials for example, that they were from Cornwall, England, and

therefore implicitly English. While the Cornish appeared ambivalent about being

categorised as English and/or British, for functional purposes when seeking work they

were quick to accentuate their Cornishness. They were keen to perpetuate the myth of

their superiority as hard rock miners par excellence to maintain an edge over ethnic

rivals, particularly the Irish, in the expanding US mining labour market.

So the Cornish at the end of the nineteenth century can be viewed as occupying a

transnational space, or perhaps a transregional space. Physical movement, financial

remittances and shared ideas linked communities in Cornwall to the Americas and

Australia. An identity based on industrial pride and prowess was carried abroad and

transplanted to communities that manifested a Cornish way of life with Methodist

chapels and their choirs, brass bands and self-help societies, distinctive foods (pastiesand saffron cake) and the Cornish dialect. Institutionally, this transnational space was

reflected in the formation of Cornish societies in cities such as New York, Chicago,

Detroit and Boston and in states like California, as well as Mexico City, Toronto,

Winnipeg and Victoria, BC. The Southern California Cornish Association as late as

1934 recognised the importance of maintaining an interconnectedness with Cornwall:

We have joined hands we Cornish folk across the main!

Hail One and All, Old Cornwall.( West Briton , 21 January 1935).

6


7/24

Draft copy only

At the turn of the twentieth century, connected on both sides of the great divide by

transnational contacts, Cornish people were able to debate their common affairs and

negotiate claims in what has been termed a transnational public sphere (Soysal

1987). Here was a classic transnational space, with family and community links

renewed by new migration, return migrants and by letters and reports in the press on

both sides of the Atlantic. Cornish people were so familiar with the United States that

it was considered almost the parish next door, with American accents discernible in

Cornwalls mining communities, as well as the tastes and values that revealed contact

with the American way of life. And yet this was a trans national space occupied by a

British industrial region , the inhabitants of which at this time only fleetingly referred

to themselves as a nation.

The demise of the transnational space

Paradoxically, while those Cornish in California were reaffirming their Cornish

heritage and identity, that same identity had been under threat in some states before

1900 as the following example from Mineral Point, Wisconsin, one of the earliest

Cornish settlements, illustrates:

while many of the Cornish immigrants in their lifetime keep up a correspondence with

Cornwall, the second generation has almost entirely dropped it, although an occasional

Cornish newspaper is received in the region. The Cornish descendants are scattering,

and have almost lost their identity as a race. They do not hesitate to marry with other

nationalities( Copeland 1998: 330).

This area of Wisconsin witnessed some of the earliest migration flows outside

Cornwall; by the turn of the twentieth century the majority of the Cornish resident inthe region had been born there and did not appear to have the same degree of

psychological attachment to Cornwall that their parents and grandparents had. Indeed,

some family networks began to break down as immigrants and their children played

out their lives in host communities far removed from Cornwall. Letters were written

less frequently or not at all to relatives in Cornwall whom they had never met or had

not seen for many years.

7


8/24

Draft copy only

Although kinship, religious and parochial or village affiliation with Cornwall were

still important, activities were increasingly focused on the United States of America

as an investment was made in the infrastructure required to support life in the

receiving communities. Additionally, we find that the parameters defining Cornish

identity were becoming fuzzier from the late nineteenth century partially as a result of

Americanization - including American schooling, intermarriage with other ethnic

groups and social mobility. This manifested itself at many levels, ranging from a

move away from Cornish sports such as wrestling, cricket and football to American

sports such as baseball and basketball, epitomised by the Cousin Jack basketball

team active at Calumet, Michigan, in 1909. It also occurred in speech, with Cornish

migrants and their American born children dropping the dialect that had marked them

out as different. I soon dropped my accent when I got to school here [Grass Valley]

stated William T. George, because everyone made fun of me.(Ewart 1998: 45).

Ashamed of their parents accents, second generation Cornish made a concerted

attempt to become what Thurner has described as un-hyphenated Americans the

more to fit into a monocultural American society that was being assiduously

championed after the First World War (Thurner 1994: 311).

But perhaps of greater significance was the decline of mining itself, the industry that

had largely defined what it meant to be Cornish, as mines across the US closed

particularly in the years after 1930, as they had done in Cornwall. Communities

began to fragment as people moved away in search of alternative employment, and

old customs began to die out as the youth jettisoned their parents values and

identities in their quest to achieve the American dream (See Waters 1990 for more on

this subject). Crucially, with a decline in metal mining in the USA, the numbers of

Cornish immigrants to the US slowed considerably after the 1920s and the once dense

transatlantic migration networks began to disintegrate. Lack of exposure to news,

ideas and ways of doing things in Cornwall resulted in a diminishing of the Cornish

presence in some overseas communities. One by one the Cornish associations

disbanded until only a handful remained and those immigrants who stayed in the old

mining communities often became retrospective and increasingly nostalgic about their

Cornish roots and heritage.

8


9/24

Draft copy only

The retrospection associated with the overseas Cornish at this time reflected that in

Cornwall itself, where mining had already declined and the way of life that had

emerged with industrialisation was passing into history. Some saw the need to look

back to a period before industrialisation, stressing Cornwalls Celtic antecedents,

exemplified by the movement to kyntelleugh an brewyon es gesys na vo kellys travyth

(gather up the fragments before they are lost) by newly formed Old Cornwall

Societies from the 1920s. Around the Cornish world a similar reaction occurred as

people sought to record, conserve and protect what was left of Cornish heritage: At

Mineral Point the Cornish restoration and the interest in Cornish foods and customs

during the 1930s came just in time to preserve an interesting chapter in the history of

the lead region (Fiedler 1986: 169). Vernacular Cornish cottages, unique to the lead

region of the Upper Mid West, were restored at Mineral Point in the 1930s (Fielder,

1986: 167-8. The Pendarvis restoration is the only officially designated Cornish

heritage site in the US). Later, the much-depleted Grass Valley Choir made a tape

recording of Cornish carols and hymns in 1950 to record for posterity the musical

contribution of Cornish pioneers in America.

However, in spite of such efforts, it was clear that many Cornish cultural events

were increasingly stage-managed and may be viewed as a cri de coeur for Cornish

families to maintain links with the cultural heritage of the former little Cornwalls

and by association, ultimately with Cornwall itself. By the mid-century the

dynamic links in the transnational chain had sundered. While both Cornish-

American communities in the States and the Cornish in Cornwall shared in an

increasingly antiquarian and nostalgic attitude to their heritage, this shared

response was happening in separate places. By the mid twentieth century those

Cornish associations that had managed to survive were mere shadows of their

former selves, beset by financial difficulties and comprised of small and aging

memberships. In Cornwall, many families lost touch with their cousins overseas

and memories of life in communities beyond Cornwall became retrospective and

mired in nostalgia. In the 1960s the Cornish transnational space had effectively

dissolved, a matter for the history books rather than contemporary life.

9


10/24

Draft copy only

From Cornish migration to Cornish diaspora

As early as 1916, a monocultural, static conception of America was being questioned:

America is coming to be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and

forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors. Any movement

which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to dye the fabric any one color, or

disentangle the threads of the strand, is false to this cosmopolitan vision (Bourne 1916:

86-87).

By the end of the twentieth century for some globalisation, an explosion of travel and

migration was transforming the form and shape of human communities around the

world (Held 2000: 1-2). But it has not necessarily led to the cultural annihilationpredicted by some observers, where regional, ethnic or national distinctiveness vanish

into a melting pot. Rather it has had the opposite effect, as ethnic groups seek to

reconcile the local with the global, in the process rediscovering, reconnecting, re-

affirming, and celebrating their various cultural heritages (See for example Mulgan

1998; Cochrane and Pain 2000; Mckay 2000: 47-84.

As communities underwent change in the USA, various economic, social anddemographic forces were changing communities in Cornwall. The Celtic revival that

began in the mid-nineteenth century but picked up momentum in the 1920s

represented an opportunity for Cornwall and the Cornish to look back beyond the

crumbling mine engine houses of a failing industrial period to a perceived golden age.

At first the preserve of an antiquarian middle class, by the 1970s this was beginning to

have a wider impact on Cornish society. Affiliation with a Celtic past allowed the

Cornish to opt out of monocultural conceptions of industrial Britain, and includethemselves within a north-western European Celtic arc, claiming a common identity

with Bretons and Galicians in mainland Europe, and Welsh, Scots, Manx, and Irish

within the British Isles. But not the Anglo Saxon English. The Cornish language,

which had ceased to be spoken in a vernacular way in the late eighteenth century, was

revived, along with the use of St Pirans flag (a white cross against a black

background) and the Celtic cross. Other symbols of Celtic Cornwall were invented

rather than re-invented, including a Cornish Gorseth, established in 1928 complete

with Bardic ceremony, and the revived use of the kilt in the Cornish national tartan

10


11/24

Draft copy only

with its predominant colours of black and gold. This new Celtic iconography, which

would have meant little or nothing to most Cornish people in the 1800s, was blended

with established and accepted industrial icons and notions of Cornishness: brass

bands, rugby football, male voice choirs, thrift, independence, sobriety, hard work and

allegiance to Methodism.

The fact that increasing people are today willing to define themselves as Cornish is

attributable to many factors. First and foremost, it is a response to the arrival in

Cornwall of many thousands of migrants from England since the 1960s. More

recently, the British Governments decision to allow devolved power to Northern

Ireland, Wales and Scotland has helped Britain unravel into its constituent national

parts. This new political environment has provided the Cornish with an opportunity to

challenge the dominant discourse of English county. Instead, demands appeared for

Cornwall to be accepted as a distinct European region; moves were made towards

securing ethnic minority status for the indigenous Cornish, the Cornish language has

been recognised as a minority European language, and a Cornish Constitutional

Convention provided evidence for a popular groundswell of opinion in favour of a

regional assembly in the shape of a petition of 50,000 signatures (Sandford 2003).

Some went further. A discourse of the Cornish as a nation has long paralleled that of

Cornwall as an English county. As noted by Morse in the Canadian context, contact

with people of a different nation often makes people more conscious of their own

nationality (Morse 1977). In Cornwall too, a significant and growing minority was

prepared to adopt the description of nation, although sometimes in addition to county,

rather than in opposition to it.

These cultural stirrings began to affect those living in Cornwall in the 1970s. As they

did, a more complex and hybrid contemporary Cornish identity began to emerge.

Ulrich Beck has commented that the individual is at the same time a member of

different communities (cited in Ptz 2003). Identities are not legacies passively

received but representations socially produced, and in this sense, matters of social

dispute (Mato 1997: 198). Although the mining and extractive industries that

underpinned a nineteenth century Cornish identity have declined on both sides of the

Atlantic, new interpretations of Cornishness were replacing them, and the Englishcounty-based identity of the nineteenth century. More importantly, the transcending of

11


12/24

Draft copy only

a mere county identity has allowed the Cornish to claim, in common with the Irish for

example, a diasporic identity. And the Cornish overseas have been centrally involved

in the promotion of this new sense of Cornishness. Less inhibited perhaps about dual

or multiple identities than many people in Cornwall, the Cornish overseas have

melded, relatively easily, nineteenth century symbols of Cornishness with those of the

Celtic, thus creating the image of the industrial Celt. This appeared rather later in

Cornwall, finding a public outlet around Cornish rugby in 1989-91. What we appear

to be witnessing, notes anthropologist, Amy Hale, is a kind of cultural feedback

resulting from a heightened awareness of ethnicity within the Celtic regions

themselveslearning about the often shared experience of emigration has created

new opportunities for dialogue around the Cornish world (Hale and Payton 2000:

95).

The Cornish space of transnationalism

The years from the 1970s witnessed a renaissance of Cornish identity overseas, aided

by an explosion among ordinary people interested in genealogy and heritage, a

process that has been ongoing and accelerated more recently through access to the

Internet. This virtual community can be viewed as an electronic public sphere that

reflects a hunger for community in our modern era (Rheingold 1995: 6). A

transnational public sphere has emerged that has allowed the Cornish in America and

in Cornwall to refresh, negotiate, and contest their common heritage. However, this is

more a sphere of the imagination, tied together as much by virtual networks as

concrete links of occupation, family and community and actual physical movement or

face-to-face interaction. The transnational space of the nineteenth century has mutated

into the space of transnationalism of the twenty-first.

This is exemplified by the Cornish American Heritage Society (CAHS), set up in

1982 with the aim of preserving the history and culture of Cornish people and

strengthening connections between Cornish communities around the world. This

organisation, with its initial membership of several hundred, held its first Gathering

of Cornish Cousins in Detroit, the first of a series of biennial meetings across North

America. Through its gatherings and its quarterly newsletter Tam Kernewek the

CAHS has been one of the main factors in the renaissance of Cornishtransnationalism. By 1999 there were 32 Cornish societies and organisations in North

12


13/24

Draft copy only

America, many of which have names derived from the Cornish language including

Penkernewek (Pennsylvania) and Keweenaw Kernewek (Michigan) and most with

active websites and journals. The CAHS has become the organ par excellence of the

revived public sphere of modern transnational identity. Tam Kernewek helps to co-

ordinate the activities of the various Cornish organisations throughout North America

and encourages Cornish participation at Celtic festivals in the USA. These popular

festivals are often organised by the descendants of immigrants, to educate others,

celebrate their heritage, and promote and preserve aspects of traditional culture

perceived as somehow being under threat (Hale and Thornton 2000). Cornish

participation at such festivals is a more recent feature than that of the Irish, Welsh or

Scots, but in 1998 the Cornish were awarded the first prize for the best tent at the

Potomac Celtic Fest, an important milestone along the route of ethnic visibility for the

Cornish in America, all semblance of former sectarian strife with the Irish now

seemingly laid aside. Many were interested, even excited, to know that there is an

active Cornish presence in the United States, noted Cornish-American Nancy Heydt

(1996).

Nineteen ninety-nine saw the inception of the Cornish Foundation for North America

(CFNA). The creation of this new society marked an important turning point in

Cornish transnationalism and was set up because its founding members care about

Cornwall and our Cornish identity (Cornish Foundation For North America leaflet,

1999). Recognising that modern Cornwall had socio-economic problems resulting

from the demise of mining and related industries, this non-political organisation

aimed to provide financial assistance for projects in Cornwall related to community

regeneration, continuing education opportunities for residents in Cornwall, and the

restoration and preservation of Cornwalls historical sites (Jolliffe 1999). Another key

milestone in the resurgence of modern Cornish transnationalism was the revival of the

famous Grass Valley Cornish Choir in 1990. Yet the resurrection of this iconic choir

was to be much more than the restoration of a vital part of the heritage of Grass

Valley, for it was to transcend retrospection and nostalgia. The Grass Valley Cornish

Choir has become a catalyst for modern Cornish transnationality that Janus-like can

look simultaneously to the past for roots in an increasingly rootless world, but also

forward, to include among its ranks people from other ethnic and nationalbackgrounds whilst forging new links with Cornwall and other Celtic parts of Europe.

13


14/24

Draft copy only

The revival of the choir has resulted in cross-cultural musical exchanges that include

new ideas and techniques as well as music, sung by choirs on both sides of the

Atlantic and cemented by tours.

Simultaneously, organisations in Cornwall played their role in this space of Cornish

transnationalism. The Cornwall Family History Society (CFHS), set up in the 1970s,

has vigorously promoted the study of Cornish genealogy and heritage with its

worldwide membership, many of its members seeking to transcend the myopic gazing

through the tangled branches of their own family tree to forge an outward looking,

more dynamic sense of global Cornishness. Indeed, it was members of the CFHS who

were responsible for setting up the CAHS and in 1994 the influential Cornish World

magazine was launched. This publication, often hard-hitting and unashamedly

political, attempts to paint a picture of contemporary Cornwall that transcends both

the utopian nineteenth century view of Cornwall resplendent in its industrial zenith, or

of more recent Disneyesque visions of Cornwall as a playground for tourists and the

retired (Kennedy and Kingcome1998). Cornish World has done much to alert its

readers of the inescapable link between migration history and modern Cornwall and

has fostered a sense of co-ethnicity and transnational identity among Cornish people

around the world.

For many people, the high point of modern Cornish transnationalism came in the first

Dewhelans (Homecoming) in May 2002, a cultural event similar to those that had

been taking place every two years in Australia ( Lowender Kernewek ) and in North

America, when many hundreds of Cornish from across the world gathered for a three-

day festival at Pendennis Castle Falmouth. The future of the event was secured by the

granting of European Objective One structural funding. Carleen Kelemen, director of

the Objective One Partnership, explained the importance of Dewhelans 2004: One of

the priorities of the Objective One programme is to deliver economic and employment

benefits based on the distinctive nature of Cornwall. Dewhelans 2004 will contribute

directly to these aims. Not only will it help enhance understanding and appreciation of

Cornish culture, it will do it in a way that is also economically beneficial. She added:

There is a niche tourist market for this kind of event, both in terms of the actual

additional visitors it will bring to Cornwall and in terms of the boost that the publicity

14


15/24

Draft copy only

generated will give Cornwall's economy and its national and international profile

(Deacon and Schwartz 2004: 198).

The Cornish space of transnationalism and national identity

The Cornish space of transnationalism was thus co-opted into the regeneration of the

Cornish economic space. But this revived space of transnationalism has further

implications. Adherence to an old country which has claims on the loyalty and

emotion of the Cornish worldwide has, according to Robin Cohen, implications for

the international state system as a number of groups [like the Cornish] evincing a

peoplehood thorough the retention or expression of separate languages, customs,

folkways and religions looks set to grow (Cohen 1997a: ix-x). Cohen notes that

concepts of diaspora have great variety and mutability (Cohen 1997b: 118). In the

Cornish case, mass movement of people has sometimes been interpreted as a crisis

migration in the wake of mining failure: people were forced into exile overseas (For

a critique of this assertion see Schwartz 2002; 2003, chapters 1 and 2). However,

Stephen Vertovecs interpretation of diaspora as part of a postmodern project of

resisting the nation-state, which is perceived as hegemonic, discriminatory, and

culturally homogenizing, and that moreover recognises and advocates the hybridity,

multiple identities, and affiliations with people, causes and traditions outside the

nation- state of residence, offers an intriguing new departure (See Vertovec 2000).

Levitts contention that, implicit in Vertovecs interpretation, is the question of

whether life across borders involves resistance to the nation-state and allows

previously marginalized groups to challenge the social hierarchy, is of relevance to

the Cornish case (see Levitt 2001b). Attempts to make the Cornish ethnically visible

worldwide place transnationalism centre stage. Although Cornish-American

associations are not meant to be political organisations, by encouraging their members

to acknowledge their ancestry as Cornish rather than English they nonetheless

strengthen the case for the Cornish to be recognised as a national minority within the

United Kingdom.

When the up to two million people of Cornish descent believed to reside in the US

alone are compared with Cornwalls population of just over half a million, with the

indigenous Cornish making up only around 50 per cent of that total, the value of aworldwide Cornish population becomes apparent. This was exemplified by a

15


16/24

Draft copy only

twelve-point appendix to the Cornish National Minority Report of 2000 stressing the

historical importance of Cornish migration in the creation of a vibrant sense of

Cornishness (Deacon 2000).

The most overtly political event of recent years in Cornwall was the 1997 Keskerdh

Kernow , a re-enactment of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, when thousands marched

on London to be defeated by the English at Blackheath. The marches of solidarity

planned in the US to compliment those in Britain clearly unsettled some. For in the

collective memory of many Cornish-Americans, Cornwall and its people were not

victims of English oppression and tyranny, but skilled migrants from a successful

English industrial region who contributed greatly to the economic powerhouse that

was the United States of America. Cornish-American historian and Bard, Gage

McKinney of California, noted that he felt uncomfortable lending support to any

activity that might be construed as a gratuitous intrusion into the internal politics of

another sovereign state (cited in Payton 1999: 399). But not all Americans were as

reticent. The 2004 Christmas edition of the American TV show The Simpsons

featured cult icon Lisa Simpson waving St Pirans flag and shouting rydhsys rag

Kernow lemmyn (freedom for Cornwall now) and Kernow bys vyken (Cornwall

forever) ( West Briton , 8 July 2004). This international showcasing of the Cornish

language and national movement came about after one of the shows production team

had been to see a show by a stand-up comedian in the US who remarked that he was

Cornish, not English.

Conclusion

This paper has shown how important transnationalism was, and is, for Cornwall and

the Cornish. But it also shows how that transnationalism should not be viewed as a

single phenomenon. The Cornish in Cornwall and the USA were originally united by

a common identity based on mining pride and prowess. But this came under threat of

extinction with the demise of mining, causing once dense transnational migration

networks to ebb and Little Cornwalls in America to fragment. Yet, apparently

subsumed within a cultural melting pot, Cornish identity was rediscovered in the

second half of the twentieth century, re-inventing itself to face a new set of

circumstances in the modern era. Once again the Cornish in Cornwall and the USAare united by a transnational public sphere, this time grafting new notions of identity

16


17/24

Draft copy only

onto older ones. In the process the Cornish transnational space has been transformed

into a qualitatively different Cornish space of transnationalism.

In the later nineteenth century the transnational space was most significant in the

economic sphere, providing an outlet for Cornish workers coping with the

restructuring that accompanied the early de-industrialisation of Cornwalls mining

economy. Remittances flowed back to Cornwall and, along with return migrants, did

much to soften the transition from a mining to services dominated economy (Perry

2002). In the late twentieth century the space of Cornish transnationalism has its

greatest impact in the cultural sphere, both refashioning and feeding changing

conceptions of the Cornish identity overseas and in Cornwall, helping formerly

separate sub-cultures, of Celtic revivalism on the one hand and industrial prowess on

the other, to blend into a self-representation of the Cornish as industrial Celts. The

renegotiation of Cornish identity in the face of massive social change in Cornwall was

reinvigorated by the presence of a space of transnationalism, which, rooted in a

former transnational space, legitimates new and alternative imaginations of

Cornishness.

The Cornish case also implies that the concept of transnationalism, albeit one that

distinguishes between different sorts of transnationalism, can be applied to what are

often viewed as sub-national, regional or even local groupings. In this sense

transnationalism does not just describe a process of transatlantic movement and

connections; it plays an active role in the reproduction of the idea of nation, a point

those who restrict their scalar gaze to the nation-state might do well to remember.

References

Allen J, Massey D and Cochrane A (1998) Rethinking the Region , Routledge,

London.

Baines D (1985), Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and Internal

Migration in England and Wales 1861-1900 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Basch et al . (1994)

17


18/24

Draft copy only

Billig M (1995) Banal Nationalism , Sage, London.

Blair T (2000) The Times 11 February; 2004.

Bourne R (1916) Trans-National America, Atlantic Monthly 111:1: 86-87.

Brettell C B and Hollifield J F (2000) Migration Theory: Talking Across Discipline s,

Routledge, London.

Brown G (2004) The Guardian 8 July

Burgess G (ed.) (1999) The New British History: Founding a Modern State 1603-

1715 , I.B.Tauris, London.

Calhoon F.D. (1995) Coolies, Kanakas and Cousin Jacks: And Eleven Other Ethnic

Groups Who Populated the West During the Gold Rush Years , privately published,

Sacramento.

Castells M (1996) The Rise of the Network Society , Blackwell: Oxford.

Cochrane A and Pain K (2000), A Globalizing Society? in Held (ed.), A Globalizing

World? , Routledge, London: 5-45.

Cohen, R. (1997a) Global Diasporas: An Introduction , UCL Press: London.

Cohen R (1997b) Diasporas, the Nation-State, and Globalisation, in W Gungwu

(ed.), Global History and Migrations , Global History and Migrations , Westview

Press, Boulder: 117-143.

Collins W (1850) Rambles beyond Railways or Notes in Cornwall Taken A-foot ,

Richard Bentley, London.

Copeland LA (1898) The Cornish in Southwest Wisconsin, Wisconsin Historical

Collection , Vol. XIV.

Deacon B (1998) Proto-regionalisation: the case of Cornwall, Journal of Regional

and Local Studies , 18:1: 27-41.

18


19/24

Draft copy only

Deacon B (2000) The Cornish and the Council of Europe Framework Convention for

the Protection of National Minorities , Cornish National Minorities Group, Redruth.

Deacon B (2004) Under construction: culture and regional formation in south-west

England, European Urban and Regional Studies 11 (3), 213-25.

Deacon B and Schwartz S (2004), The Cornish Family , Cornish Editions, Fowey.

Deacon B, Cole D and Tregidga G (2003) Mebyon Kernow and Cornish Nationalism ,

Welsh Academic Press, Cardiff.

Ewart S (1989), Cornish Mining Families of Grass Valley, CA , AMS Press, New

York.

Ewart S (1998) Highly Respectable Families: The Cornish of Grass Valley California

1854 -1954 , Comstock Bonanza Press, Grass Valley.

Faist T (1999) Transnationalization in International Migration: Implications for the

Study of Citizenship and Culture Working Paper WPTC-99-08, Transnational

Communities Programme, Oxford University.

Faist T (2000) The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and

Transnational Social Spaces , Oxford University Press, Oxford.

George Fiedler (1986), Mineral Point: A History , the Memorial Pendarvis

Endowment Trust Fund, Mineral Point.

Granruth A (1999) Mining Gold to Mining Wallets: Central City, Colorado 1859-

1999 , privately published, Central City.

Glick Schiller N Basch L and Blanc-Szanton C eds. (1992), Towards a transnational

perspective on migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered ,

New York Academy of Sciences, New York.

Glick-Schiller N (1997) The Situation of Transnational Studies, Identities 4:2: 155-

166.

19


20/24

Draft copy only

Hale A and Payton P (2000), Introduction in Hale and Payton (eds.), New Directions

in Celtic Studies , University of Exeter Press, Exeter: 1-14.

Hale A and Thornton S (2000), Pagans, Pipers and Politicos: Constructing Celtic in

a Festival Context, in Hale and Payton (eds.), New Directions in Celtic Studies

University of Exeter Press, Exeter: 97-107.

Hannertz U (1996) Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places , London:

Routledge.

Held D (ed.) (2000), A Globalizing World? Culture, Economic, Politics , Routledge,

London.

Heydt N O (1996), Oatlands Celtic Fest, Tam Kernewek 14: 2.

Jolliffe J (1999), The price of success? Tam Kernewek 17: 2-3.

Jones M and MacLeod G (2004), Regional spaces, spaces of regionalism: territory,

insurgent politics and the English question, Transactions of the Institute of British

Geographers NS29, 433-52.

Kearney M (1995) The local and the global: the anthropology of globalization and

transnationalism, Annual Review of Anthropology , 24: 547-65.

Kennedy N and Kingcome N (1998), Disneyfication of Cornwall Developing a

Poldark heritage complex, International Journal of Heritage Studies 4: 45-59.

Kinyon E (1950) Cornish Migration to Grass Valley, Nevada County Historical

Society Bulletin 3:6.

Lee H (2004) Second generation Tongan transnationalism: Hope for the future?,

Asia Pacific Viewpoint , 45(2): 235-254.

Levitt P (2001a) The Transnational Villagers , University of California Press,

Berkeley.

20


21/24

Draft copy only

Levitt P (2001b) Between God, Ethnicity, and Country: An Approach to the Study of

Transnational Religion, Paper presented at the Workshop on Transnational

Migration, Comparative Perspectives, (30 June-1 July, Princeton University).

Lucassen J and Lucassen L (eds) (1999) Migration, Migration History,

History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives , Peter Lang, Bern.

Mckay H (2000), The Globalization of Culture? in D Held (ed.), A Globalizing

World? Routledge, London: 47-84.

McKinney G (1997) A High and Holy Place: A Mining Camp Church at New

Almaden , Pine Press, Sunnyvale.

Mato D (1997) On Global and Local Agents and the Social Making of Transnational

Identities and Related Agendas in Latin America, Identities , 4(2): 167-212.

Merivale H (1857), Cornwall, The Quarterly Review 102: 289-329.

Morse S (1977), Being a Canadian, Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 9 (3):

265-73.

Mulgan G (1998) Connexity: Responsibility, Freedom, Business and Power in the

New Century , Viking, London.

Paasi A (1986), The institutionalization of regions: a theoretical framework for

understanding the emergence of regions and the constitution of regional identity,

Fennia 164 (1), 105-46.

Paasi A (1991), Deconstructing regions: notes on the scales of spatial life,

Environment and Planning A 23, 239-56.

Payton P (1999), The Cornish Overseas , Alexander Associates, Fowey.

Payton P (2001), Cousin Jacks and Ancient Britons: Cornish immigrants and ethnic

identity, Journal of Australian Studies 68: 54-64.

21


22/24

Draft copy only

Perry R (2002), The making of modern Cornwall, 1800-2000: a geo-economic

perspective, in Payton (ed.) Cornish Studies Ten , University of Exeter Press, Exeter,

166-89.

Pollard S (1981) Peaceful Conquest: the Industrialisation of Europe 1760-1970.

Oxford University Press, Oxford

Portes, A Ggaurnizo L E and Landolt P (eds.), (1999a) Transnational Communities.

Special issue, Ethnic and Racial Studies , 22(2).

Portes, A Ggaurnizo L E and Landolt P (eds.), (1999b) The study of

transnationalism: pitfalls and promises of an emergent research field, Ethnic and

Racial Studies , 22(2): 217-37

Ptz R (2003), Culture and Entrepreneurship remarks on Transculturality as

Practice, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 94 (5): 554-563.

Rheingold H (1995), The virtual community: Homesteading on the virtual frontier,

Addison-Wesley, New York.

Rouse R (1991) Mexican migration and the social space of postmodernism,

Diaspora , 1(1): 8-23.

Rouse R (1995) Questions of identity: personhood and collectivity in transnational

migration to the United States, Critique of Anthropology , 15 (4): 351-80.

Rowe J (1974) The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American

Mining Frontier , Liverpool University Press, Liverpool.

Rowse A.L. (1967), The Cornish in America , Dyllansow Truran, Redruth.

Sandford M (2003), A Cornish Assembly? Prospects for devolution in the Duchy in

Payton (ed.) Cornish Studies Eleven , University of Exeter Press, Exeter: 40-56.

22


23/24

Draft copy only

Schwartz S (2002) Cornish Migration Studies: An Epistemological and Paradigmatic

Critique, in P. Payton (ed.) Cornish Studies Ten , University of Exeter Press, Exeter:

136-165.

Schwartz S (2003), Cornish Migration to Latin America: A Global and Transnational

Perspective unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Exeter.

Smith A (2004) Regions, spaces of economic practice and diverse economies in the

new Europe, European Urban and Regional Studies 11 (1), 9-25.

Smith M P and Guarnizo L E (eds.), (1998) Transnationalism from Below ,

Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick.

Soysal Y (1987) Changing parameters of citizenship and claims making: organised

Islam in European public spheres, Theory and Society , 26: 509-527.

Spoonley P (2000) Reinventing Polynesia: The Cultural Politics of Transnational

Pacific Communities, Working Paper WPTC-2K-14, Transnational Communities

Programme, Oxford University.

Thistlethwaite F (1991) Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and

Twentieth Centuries, in J. Vecoli and S.M. Sinke, (eds.) A Century of European

Migrations, 1830-1930 , University of Illinois Press, Urbana: 17-57.

Thurner AW (1994) Strangers and Sojourners: A History of Michigans Keweenaw

Peninsula , Wayne State University Press, Detroit.

Todd AC (1995), The Cornish Miner in America , Arthur H Clark Co., Spokane.

Tllyan K (1991) The nation-state and its Others: in lieu of a preface, Diaspora , 1,

3-7.

Vertovec S (1999) Conceiving and researching transnationalism, Ethnic and Racial

Studies , 22(2): 447-62.

23


24/24

Draft copy only

Vertovec S and Cohen R (1999) Introduction in Vertovec, S. and Cohen R. (eds)

Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism , Aldershot: Edward Elgar, xiii-xxviii.

Vertovec S (2000) Religion and Diaspora: New Landscapes of Religion in the West,

Paper presented at the conference on New Landscapes of Religion in the West, (27-

29 September, University of Oxford).

Vertovec S. and Cohen R. (1999) Introduction in Vertovec, S. and Cohen R. (eds)

Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism , Edward Elgar, Aldershot: xiii-xxviii.

Von Tunzelmann, Nick (1981) Technical progress during the industrial revolution

in Floud and McCloskey (eds) The Economic History of Britain since1700. Vol. 1.

1700-1860 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Waters MC (1990), Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America , University of

California Press, Berkeley.

lives across a liquid landscape

Documents